The present innovations generally address discovering and displaying videos from around the Internet, and more particularly, include VIDEO INDEXING, SEARCH AND DELIVERY (“VISD”) PLATFORMS, APPARATUSES, METHODS AND SYSTEMS.
The Internet has developed over the past decades from being a source of information to now also being a source of entertainment. One of the major factors influencing this development has been the increases in computing power and data transmission bandwidth available to consumers at reasonable prices. An inexpensive tablet computer now has a video processing capability that once required a room of expensive, highly specialized equipment to provide. Similarly, the bandwidth of data transmission over the Internet available to consumer devices now even over cellular data networks exceeds by orders of magnitude what was available with prior, astronomically expensive, cutting edge optical networks.
With the development of the Internet towards fulfilling entertainment needs, a parallel development has been underway with respect to content creation. Beginning with the handful of over-the-air television networks that once produced the vast majority of entertainment content, consumers enjoyed a significant increase in content variety with the advent of cable and satellite television. As Internet connection bandwidth and computing power reasonably available to consumers developed to a point where video content could be reliably consumed from Internet sources, consumers experienced a nearly limitless expansion of entertainment content available to them. Internet content production had none of the restraints previously imposed by television, meaning that anyone had the ability to produce content of any type from anywhere they had an Internet connection. However, the fact that there are limitless choices in content presents the consumer with the work of wading through that content in order to find content they would like to consume.
The Internet also developed from its early days as a means of social interaction amongst users. Early examples of social interaction enabled by the Internet include list-servs, chatrooms, instant messaging and email. Later, online social networks developed as a more public and permanent means of social interaction. Early examples included MySpace and Facebook.
Eventually, entertainment content and social networks became more and more inter-related. Internet users found social networks as a natural outlet to share their opinions and commentary on entertainment content found on those social networks and elsewhere on the Internet. Other users' opinions and commentary also served as a helpful tool for users trying to sift through the vast amount of content available on the Internet to find content that they would like to consume. However, there still is a lot of work required of users to parse the now vast amount of social feedback on equally vast content options available to them, not to mention that social feedback and content are now available from hundreds or thousands of primary sources.
Accordingly, the present inventions attempt to provide tools to allow users to enjoy the great content available on the Internet without the significant amount of work it currently takes to find, vet and consume that content.
However, in order to develop a reader's understanding of the innovations, disclosures have been compiled into a single description to illustrate and clarify how aspects of these innovations operate independently, interoperate as between individual innovations, and/or cooperate collectively. The application goes on to further describe the interrelations and synergies as between the various innovations; all of which is to further compliance with 35 U.S.C. §112.